Word: tehran
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...Roxana Saberi and that of three Iranian diplomats held by the U.S. military in Iraq. The Iranians were not demanding an exchange of prisoners, the European envoy told TIME, but were setting up a more subtle test of the Obama Administration's intentions. Now that Saberi has been released, Tehran will be watching the U.S. reaction for signs of a reciprocal goodwill gesture...
...comparison between the two cases. While Saberi is a journalist who was jailed in the course of her professional work, Washington says the three Iranian diplomats, arrested in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil in January 2007, are in fact members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which oversees Tehran's ties with militant groups elsewhere in the Middle East. Following Saberi's release on Monday, the U.S. State Department said hers was a humanitarian issue rather than a diplomatic one, and that there was no deal linking it with the detained Iranians. "There was no quid pro quo," said...
...mouse game from the start. Iran watchers viewed it as a play by Iranian hard-liners to insert themselves into the debate over diplomatic engagement, giving anti-détente forces a tool to retard diplomatic progress because the U.S. would have to limit its engagement with Tehran as long as Saberi was held captive. "They can use her to sabotage any opening," said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution. (See pictures of the health-care system in Tehran...
...Saberi's release is seen by the Administration as a victory for Iranian pragmatists over hard-liners - and the U.S. may find a benefit in reciprocating. Releasing the detained Iranians could build trust for talks between Washington and Tehran on security issues in Afghanistan and Iraq and also on the thorny issue of Iran's nuclear program. And it could strengthen the hand of the Iranian pragmatists who sent the signal through the European diplomatic channel...
Just before the official announcement came, Saberi's parents and lawyers, as well as dozens of reporters, had gathered in front of Tehran's Evin prison in anticipation of her release. Reza Saberi, the reporter's father, was visibly expectant, and said that finally "things were moving on a rational track." The reporter's mother paced in front of the entrance impatiently, at times stopping to stand with her arms akimbo and dropping her head, at others squatting down to sob into a napkin. When the journalist was finally released, she was taken through a back door, out of reporters...